Amina is not a shouter. She would tell you that.

Mornings, though. There is one hour between quarter past seven and quarter past eight and she has to get three of them out of a flat. On a good day she raises her voice twice. On a Thursday, when she has slept badly and the youngest cannot find a shoe, she hears herself say something about being sick of all of them, and there is a second where her eight year old's face does something and Amina sees it.

In the car she is fine again, and by nine she is at work, and by six she has decided it was not a big deal.

What she has not clocked is that the shoe is not the variable. The variable is Wednesday night. And the second thing she has not clocked is that her eight year old, who used to tell her things on the way to school, has stopped telling her things on the way to school.